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Eleventh Day: Sauce
No. 156-HARD SAUCE.
Beat to a cream one cup butter, to which add three cups powdered sugar. Beat long and hard, then place upon a small dish and smooth into shape with a knifeblade dipped in cold water. It is made richer by having half a cup of wine, or the juice of a lemon, or both, beaten up with it. When smooth, grate nutmeg thickly on the top. "Here is another extremely nice one:" No. 157-FRUIT PUDDING SAUCE.
Half a cup of butter, two and a half cups sugar, one cup boiling water, one dessert spoonful corn starch wet with a little cold milk, one glass of wine, the juice and half the peel of a lemon. Cream the butter and sugar together; pour the corn starch into the boiling water and stir until well thickened; beat all together five minutes in a bowl off the fire, heat then until nearly boiling, add the wine and serve.
No. 158 FRENCH SAUCE.
Beat half a pound butter to a cream, stir in half a pound brown sugar, add the beaten yolk of an egg and one gill of wine, place it over the fire and keep stirring till it simmers. Grate nutmeg over it before it is sent to table. "That is an excellent sauce for apple dumplings," observed Aunt Jane, "but I can tell you of one much simpler - plain molasses. I think the combination is excellent." "Isn't it for other dumplings too, Mrs. King?" inquired Edith. "No; with any other fruit the molasses seems to destroy the delicacy of the flavor; but it just suits the apple." "I should like to make some little apple dumplings," said Rose, "such as the farmer's wife gave King George the Third, and he couldn't possibly imagine how the apple got in there." "He wasn't the wisest of men, was he?" said Aunt Jane. "But all you have to do is to roll out your paste and cut little squares of it just large enough to cover an apple, then peel and core your apple, put a little sugar in the hole in the center, wrap it tightly in the paste and drop it into boiling water. It doesn't need any cloth, because it keeps its shape well enough without, that is, if the paste is not too rich. Very particular people tie each one up in a separate square of cloth; but for a family of the size of ours, when some at least will want a second dumpling or part of one, it would be a great labor. I think I should let them take their chance in a good large pot with a plate in the bottom of it," "Have you come to the end of your dumpling recipes, Aunt Jane?" "By no means, but we have about come to the end of our time, for Rhoda will want us to get out of the way so that she can cook the dinner. So we'll just get the cupcakes into the oven, and leave the rest of our recipes until another time."
Three pudding sauces in ascending order of richness, plus Aunt Jane's spoken method for boiled apple dumplings. All three are built on creamed butter and sugar; the difference is what happens after.
- The hinge: temperatureBoth cooked sauces (Nos. 157 and 158) are emulsions of butter, sugar and, in the French sauce, egg yolk. Held at or below a bare simmer they stay glossy; brought to a rolling boil the butter breaks out and the yolk scrambles. "Keep stirring till it simmers" means exactly that, and then off the heat.
- Powdered sugarIn this period the term means sugar ground fine, not the cornstarch-buffered confectioners' sugar sold now. Modern confectioners' sugar works and gives a smoother hard sauce; superfine (caster) sugar gives a slightly grainier, more traditional result.
- A gillHalf a cup, four fluid ounces. "One glass of wine" in No. 157 is looser but conventionally around a wineglass, roughly a quarter cup; start there and taste.
- Dessert spoonfulBetween a teaspoon and a tablespoon, about two teaspoons. Two teaspoons of cornstarch will thicken one cup of boiling water to a light pouring sauce, which is what is wanted here.
- What "wine" meantIn sweet sauces of this period it most often meant a fortified wine such as sherry or madeira, though the recipe does not say. Brandy is the usual substitute in hard sauce today. Note that none of it is cooked off in No. 156, which is served uncooked.
- NutmegGrate it fresh over the finished sauce. Pre-ground nutmeg loses its volatiles quickly and the whole point of the thick grating on top is aroma at the table.
- Quantities and yieldNo. 156 makes something over a pound of hard sauce, nearer a pound and a half if the wine goes in, enough for a large plum pudding and a good many people; No. 157 yields upwards of a pint. Halving either is sensible for a household serving four to six. Hard sauce keeps a week refrigerated and freezes well; the cooked sauces are best made the day they are served and reheated gently.
- The apple dumplingsAunt Jane's method is sound: a short crust rather than a rich one, wrapped tight with no gap at the seam, dropped into boiling water with a plate in the bottom of the pot so the pastry does not catch. Medium cooking apples will want something like half an hour at a steady boil; as she says, a rich paste will not hold its shape without a cloth.
Hard sauce is the plainest of the English pudding sauces: butter and sugar beaten cold, shaped, and set against something hot so that it melts into it. Flavoured with brandy it is brandy butter, the standard accompaniment to Christmas pudding; with rum, rum butter, long associated with Cumberland. The cooked sauces here belong to the same nineteenth-century household repertoire, where a boiled or steamed pudding was assumed and the sauce was the variable. The King George III story Rose repeats -- the king marvelling at how the apple got inside the dumpling -- is a stock anecdote rather than documented fact. What is genuinely period is Aunt Jane's practicality about the cloths: tying each dumpling separately was the careful method, and she declines it openly on the grounds of labour for a large family.